1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to RFID systems, and more particularly relates to data processing in the transmitting and receiving end in RFID systems.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems are short range communications systems that can operate at a variety of frequencies. High Frequency (HF) RFID systems operate at 13.56 MHz. They are utilized in any situation where a unique identification system is required.
RFID systems operate by reading a radio frequency signal and transferring the information between a processing device (reader) and a transponder, or RF tag. The radio waves are reflected back from the RFID tag into digital information that can then be passed on to computers for data analysis. The RF tags consist of active tags and passive tags. Passive tags in general have data permanently burned into the tag, and utilize the radio frequency from the reader to transmit their signal. Active tags have an on-board battery power for transmitting their data signal over a greater distance.
RFID systems can be software or hardware systems. A conventional software RFID system consists of an RF front-end circuit and an MCU that receives the data from the front-end circuit, samples the data and processes it. The RF front-end circuit has a one-bit transmitting rate, meaning the MCU also needs to sample and process the data at a one-bit rate. This results in an expensive MCU with limited processing speeds.
A conventional hardware RFID system needs to incorporate hardware that supports all formats of RFID data. This also results in high costs.